He stands gripping the iron-linked fence between white-knuckled fingers, and he closes his eyes and listens to the throbbing engine and feels the blast of wind tugging at his clothes, and he smells the exhaust, and the airplane roars overhead, its twin engines screaming. He whips around and watches in amazement as the plane climbs into the sky, becoming a speck before disappearing over the naked treetops. Then it is cold again, a coldness that gnaws at the bones in his fingers, a coldness that echoes the bitter ice that has wrapped around his ribs, an ice whose fingers slowly clog his arteries and tiptoe into his heart’s chambers; an ice that will kill him.
He turns and grasps the rusted fence once more, and he waits for the next plane to take off. He has always been fascinated by airplanes, and he never knew why, but now, he thinks, he does. He watches the next plane rush overhead, a single-engine prop, and he knows, for certain, why he cannot tear his eyes—his tear-soaked eyes—away from the wondrous machines taking flight: he, like them, like those pilots, wants to take flight. He wants to spread wings, and he wants to leave it all behind: the sleepless nights, the broken heart, the days spent smiling while, inside, he curls into a fetal position and weeps and yearns for death.
His dream, you see, was simple: to love and be loved. He had found it, and it had been beautiful, but it was gone before he could tell her those three words that meant everything and nothing. He had stood at this airport, and he had watched her go, had smiled and told her, “Good Luck,” while wanting to fall onto his knees and wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face into her side and beg her to stay. He had watched her plane ascend and dwindle and disappear, and he had gone back to his car and sat in the driver’s seat and didn’t leave the parking garage because his eyes were too blotched from the tears. They say there is only “One,” and he believed he found her, and he believes he has lost her. She is gone, now no more than a memory that does not fade but grows sharper, a memory that does not dim but grows brighter. He had never told her how he felt, had never confessed how deeply he liked her—how richly he loved her. He had never confessed how he could see them together forever, how they could be happy and content, how they could, together, raise a wonderful family. He had told her nothing, only “Good Luck,” and then he had watched her go, out of his life, but never out of his heart. She will be with him forever, a haunting phantom, a poisonous memory, a bitter regret, surrounding him in his dreams, calling out his name. He cannot escape her, nor the pain, nor the tears, nor the sorrow; and so he begins to climb.
They say love—genuine, raw, and heart-wrenching love—is selfless. He had loved her from the moment their eyes met—those gaping brown eyes whose depth could not be pierced even by the sun’s most violent rays—and he had known he would have no fate but to watch her go. They say love is a perfect match, polar opposites pulled together into an inseparable bond. But he knows there is no such animal; love is bizarre, unpredictable, and doomed to provide nothing but a freeze-dried corpse. She had always dreamed of going to Africa and starting orphanages; her great heart was, perhaps, reflected in those eyes. He had always dreamed of being a husband and a father, but she never wanted to settle down. He dreamed of gardening, taking his children to baseball games, and falling asleep beside the love of his life with nothing but a blanket of stars keeping watch overhead. They say love is the welding of two hearts into a single organic rhythm; he knows there is no such thing. It is an illusion, a fairy-tale; real love is marked by tears and not by bliss. She had not wanted his dream, had wanted to be an adventurer; and so any such “love” was doomed, from the start, to be broken.
The snow crunches underfoot as he nears the tarmac. He had said, “Come, let us reason together,” and he decided to avoid her, to never again peer into those enrapturing eyes. But she was an enigma, a phenomenon, and against all wisdom and logic, he was drawn to her side. They developed a fantastic friendship, and all the while he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was diving into a pit where he would starve, wither away, and become nothing but a raggedy-clothed skeleton infested with rats and mice. But love is like that; it is an entity that seduces and enslaves and takes control of the body’s members and carries the person into the darkest corners of Hell. He was seduced, and he was enslaved, and after they talked on the phone every night, after he told her, “You’re such a wonderful friend,” he would cry himself to sleep and dream of being with her forever; bittersweet dreams: sweet because they promised all he wanted, and bitter because they promised a promise that could not be delivered. He wept as he fell asleep, and he wept when he awoke; but he will weep no more.
He can see the lights at the end of the runway, the lights that beckon him forward as he steps onto the tarmac, the lights that promise nothing he wanted and everything he wants. It was love that had drawn him into her presence, and it is love that draws him forward. It is love—not love lost but love never realized—that holds him in its iron vice. It is love—not love shared but love never known—that sends adrenaline coursing through his veins. He could not live with her, and he cannot live without her. The lights grow larger, nearing, and the engines roar; but he does not see the lights, sees only those eyes, those eyes so bright and beautiful and brilliant; and he does not hear the engines but hears only her laugh, that laugh that has echoed in his mind ever since the day he watched her plane take flight. Now he is running down the highway, and he feels his heart—a heart long-dead but still beating rebelliously behind his ribs—thunder in his chest. He can see the tall grass waving in the breeze, can see the sprawling trees rising out of the earth, and he can see her now, surrounded by children who cling to her, for she is their only mother; but she does not see him, and he calls out her name, and she does not hear him. He falls to his knees in the grass.
He is kneeling on the pavement, tears sprinkling upon his cheeks and freezing in the cold, droplets of ice upon his face. His head is bowed, a final prayer, a prayer for deliverance, a prayer that shall be answered. He calls out her name, but she does not respond. He looks up, and he sees not the plane bearing down upon him but only her face, and he doesn’t hear the shrieking propellers but only her words—“We could never be like that, and you knew it.” Her face is the last thing he sees, and her words are the last thing he hears, and then he is nothing but bits of bones and ripped clothing and tattered flesh, nothing but a streak of blood trailing down the runway, and he knows her no more.
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